Los Angeles — (JTA) — “You survive, you honor us by living,” said Martin Greenfield, now a New York master tailor, recalling his father’s words after he was liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp.

The quote could easily be taken as the theme of “The Jewish Journey: America,” a PBS documentary tracking the migrations over 350 years of Jews fleeing Latin America, czarist Russia, Nazi Germany and the Muslim world for these shores.

The one-hour program, opening with a majestic rendition of “America the Beautiful,” will air on PBS stations nationwide in March and April. The show is produced, directed and written by Andrew Goldberg, who has become the semi-official Jewish chronicler for PBS, with such productions as “The Yiddish World Remembered” (2002), “Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century” (2007) and “Jerusalem: Center of the World” (2009).

While many Jews arrived in the United States seeking refuge from persecution, millions more came for economic reasons – to build better lives for themselves and their children in the New World.

On February 15, 38-year-old volunteer security guard Dan Uzan was shot and killed outside a Copenhagen synagogue during a bat mitzvah celebration. A month earlier, a gunman executed four customers at a kosher grocery store in Paris.

In May 2014, a gunman killed four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. In 2012, a gunman murdered three students and a teacher at Toulouse Jewish primary school in south-west France. Eight-year-old Miriam Monsonego was shot point-blank in the head.

You might discern a common theme to these shocking crimes. Seventy years after the Holocaust, Jews are again being murdered in Europe for being Jews.

These recent outrages are but the tip of an anti-Semitic iceberg. About 7000 French Jews made aliyah (migrated) to Israel last year. For good reason. Jews make up 1 per cent of the French population, but half of all racially-motivated crimes during 2014 targeted Jews. In recent weeks several hundred graves were defaced at a Jewish cemetery in north-east France; in Germany a synagogue in the city of Wuppertal was firebombed.

Actually, I am just married. There is no such thing as "gay" marriage. There is only "marriage." There is nothing special about my marriage, other than it is now legal in my state. Did you notice I italicized and bolded the word "state"? Yeah, that is what makes my marriage "special." It is only legal in my state and 36 others (there are 50 states) and not on a federal level. So, ever wondered what a difference it can make?

Well, for one, my home and possessions can't be claimed by the State if my husband were to die (G-d forbid). Unknown or distant relatives can't roll up and take my shit (or his, if it were me to go). I don't have to get documentation to visit him in the hospital or get his medical records. And this year, I am not a "dependent", I am a "spouse." So, instead of a return of $750 from Federal, it is now almost $5900! I don't have a job. I don't work from home. I take care of our home, but now, it is different. To be clear, it isn't just about the Benjamins, it is about being EQUAL! Well, kinda. See, if we were to move to one of those other 13 states, well, I am back to being a "dependent."

The Supreme Court is supposed too take up this issue soon. Many are already popping their champagne corks. Don't. It is very possible they will rule in our favor, but don't think for a moment the haters will stop trying to declare me and my husband second-class (or worse) citizens. Already we are seeing states trying to fight marriage EQUALITY. To this day, we are seeing efforts to overturn women's reproductive rights, and, in many places, they are still limited. Too many are becoming complacent; thinking the battle is over, or almost over. We have to stay strong, be loud, and continue to demand that gay people are entitled to being seen as citizens; human.

My marriage is boring. It is nothing spectacular. It is routine. But, I love my husband, please remember I should be entitled to share the rewards (and responsibilities) of that love.

ETA: I wanted to say thank you to all the people who wished us well. It was very kind. I think, however, I didn't make the point I intended. LOL! We got married in November of last year, so as of today, we have been married 3 months. I was trying to point out how, for years (for us), that our 'partnership' had several disadvantages but once being allowed to legally marry, many of those disadvantages evaporated. The tax situation was just one glaring example of how unjustly and unequally we were treated because of our sexual orientation.

That said, it was nice to see all the well-wishes again. :giggle:

I apologize for my point being a bit convoluted, but I hope people do see how something as simple as marriage "rights" makes a huge difference in the life of someone they know.

Chiune Sugihara,
the Japanese Consul-General in Kaunas, Lithuania, issued thousands of visas to Jews fleeing Nazi occupied Poland in accordance with Japanese policy. The last diplomat to leave Kaunas, Sugihara continued stamping visas from the open window of his departing train.

Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and his colleagues saved as many as 100,000 Hungarian Jews by providing them with diplomatic passes.

Aristides de Sousa Mendes, between June 16 and 23, 1940, frantically issued Portuguese visas, free of charge, to over 30,000 refugees seeking to escape the Nazi terror.

Dimitar Peshev, Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of Bulgaria and Minister of Justice during World War II. He rebelled against the pro-Nazi cabinet and prevented the Deportation of Bulgaria's 48,000 Jews.

Jews comprised the largest single group of victims of the systematic slaughter by the Nazi Third Reich. However, several other groups were also targets of mass extermination, among them were homosexuals, especially gay men.

Prior to the rise of the Third Reich, Germany had a large, and thriving GL community, especially in Berlin, which boasted several gay bars, clubs, newspapers, and organizations. The larger cities were much more tolerant, but homosexuality was still frowned upon, so people were discreet and cautious. However, with a crushing depression in post WWI Germany, many started looking for scapegoats to the problems of Germany and the reason for her defeat in WWI. Jews, of course, were the main target, but gays and others also became singled out for blame. When the Nazis started to rise to power, a long standing, but mostly unused law, Paragraph 175, was enforced. It criminalized all sexual acts between men. Gay men started to be arrested, tried, and imprisoned throughout Germany.

When the initial work camps were established, gay men were among the first to be sent to the various camps. They gay men were identified with a large "A" on their clothes. It stood for Arschficker, "Ass Fucker". Eventually, they would come to be identified by a pink triangle. While there were a few other identifiers employed, the pink triangle became the most recognized and used. Gay men were made to wear a pink triangle on their chest, as well as a large one on their back. The pink triangles were made larger, like the yellow triangles for the Jews, than other triangles, so that guards and other prisoners would know a gay man was approaching.

Gay men were brutalized in the work camps. They were made to do chores so grueling as to work them to death. They didn't just face hate and degradation from the guards, but other prisoners could be just as cruel, as they viewed them as "perverts". The men were sometimes forced to work nude, raped, beaten to death, lynched, and even had dogs set upon them. Eventually, with the death camps establishment, they would die in the gas chambers. Most other prisoners avoided them so there would be no "guilt by association."

The liberation of the camps didn't have the same meaning for gay men. Many were simply moved to German prisons to serve out their sentences from their prosecutions under Paragraph 175. Some were given "time served" shorter sentences or reprieves. Those who didn't go directly to jail, faced discrimination because their families were "shamed" by having a "homosexual" in the family. While others received compensation for loss of money and property, gay men didn't get any reparations. It would 54 years (1999) before the first memorials of the Holocaust included gay men!! But it was the dawn of the 21st century (2000), before the German government officially apologized for the persecution of gay men after the liberation of the camps and acknowledged the devastation brought down on gay men in during the Holocaust.

Believed to be the last gay survivor of the Holocaust, Gad Beck passed away on June 24, 2012.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. We must remember.

The pink triangle is no longer a symbol of shame and persecution; it is a symbol of PRIDE!

Jews comprised the largest single group of victims of the systematic slaughter by the Nazi Third Reich. However, several other groups were also targets of mass extermination, among them were homosexuals, especially gay men.

Prior to the rise of the Third Reich, Germany had a large, and thriving GL community, especially in Berlin, which boasted several gay bars, clubs, newspapers, and organizations. The larger cities were much more tolerant, but homosexuality was still frowned upon, so people were discreet and cautious. However, with a crushing depression in post WWI Germany, many started looking for scapegoats to the problems of Germany and the reason for her defeat in WWI. Jews, of course, were the main target, but gays and others also became singled out for blame. When the Nazis started to rise to power, a long standing, but mostly unused law, Paragraph 175, was enforced. It criminalized all sexual acts between men. Gay men started to be arrested, tried, and imprisoned throughout Germany.

When the initial work camps were established, gay men were among the first to be sent to the various camps. They gay men were identified with a large "A" on their clothes. It stood for Arschficker, "Ass Fucker". Eventually, they would come to be identified by a pink triangle. While there were a few other identifiers employed, the pink triangle became the most recognized and used. Gay men were made to wear a pink triangle on their chest, as well as a large one on their back. The pink triangles were made larger, like the yellow triangles for the Jews, than other triangles, so that guards and other prisoners would know a gay man was approaching.

Gay men were brutalized in the work camps. They were made to do chores so grueling as to work them to death. They didn't just face hate and degradation from the guards, but other prisoners could be just as cruel, as they viewed them as "perverts". The men were sometimes forced to work nude, raped, beaten to death, lynched, and even had dogs set upon them. Eventually, with the death camps establishment, they would die in the gas chambers. Most other prisoners avoided them so there would be no "guilt by association."

The liberation of the camps didn't have the same meaning for gay men. Many were simply moved to German prisons to serve out their sentences from their prosecutions under Paragraph 175. Some were given "time served" shorter sentences or reprieves. Those who didn't go directly to jail, faced discrimination because their families were "shamed" by having a "homosexual" in the family. While others received compensation for loss of money and property, gay men didn't get any reparations. It would 54 years (1999) before the first memorials of the Holocaust included gay men!! But it was the dawn of the 21st century (2000), before the German government officially apologized for the persecution of gay men after the liberation of the camps and acknowledged the devastation brought down on gay men in during the Holocaust.

Believed to be the last gay survivor of the Holocaust, Gad Beck passed away on June 24, 2012.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. We must remember.

The pink triangle is no longer a symbol of shame and persecution; it is a symbol of PRIDE!

KRYSTYNA Chiger was four years old when the Germans invaded Poland. Her brother Pawel was, as she puts it, “just half a year old”.

Born into a successful, middle-class Jewish family in Lvov, she spent the first years of her life in a grand apartment overlooking one of the most vibrant cities in Poland, now part of the Ukraine. “It was a magical place, a Renaissance city, only it was not the best place to be a Jew,” writes Chiger, with typical restraint, in her memoir.

Lvov, known as Little Venice, was a city of winding cobbled streets opening on to old squares of flowers, fountains, and stone churches. Beneath those streets ran their counterpart: the city sewers, as cold and mysterious as the underbelly of a snake. This network of dark, fetid tunnels would become the family’s home for more than a year. The sewer would save their lives.

Chiger’s first inkling of peril had come on the morning of 1 September, 1939. Chiger’s father took her to the balcony of their apartment. He pointed to the Messerschmitts overhead and told his daughter that the Germans, already at war, were on the outskirts of Lvov. “That was the same year my mother first took me to kindergarten,” she recalls. “I remember holding her hand, not wanting her to leave. It was difficult, but of course it was nothing compared to what was coming. I stood on our balcony with my father and he told me to look up. ‘My Krzysha,’ he said. ‘This is our end.’” As a child, it must have seemed incomprehensible. “Yes,” she says with a tiny, surprising laugh. “I knew it was bad, but of course I didn’t know just how bad.”

Chiger is now 76, a retired dentist living on Long Island with her husband, Marian, also a Holocaust survivor. She has a wonderfully low, cracked, heavily accented voice, as lived in as an old shoe. She laughs softly and often, and believes that humour was essential to her family’s survival.

TEL AVIV, Israel — Shortly after the Nazi invasion of what was then Hungary in May 1944, Renee Ganz's family and most of the 25,000 Jews in the city of Oradea were forced into cattle cars and transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

Men and boys were placed in one line, while women and girls were led to another when they arrived at the camp in Oświęcim, Poland. Ganz was just 15 at the time.

"I asked a German soldier why we were being separated and he said, 'You've had a long journey. You need to take a shower,'" Ganz, now 86, recalls. "That's when the selection began."

German officers took one look at the prisoners and decided who would live and who would die.